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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Man U and Building Bridges - 2-0 for Botch-ups in a Month

Readers of my blog could have guessed that I'm a fan of Manchester United and I've been a fan since the days of Eric Cantona.

It is good that they will be appearing in Malaysia though I will not be making any special trip for the match in KL.

I think the FAM is making a mistake by defying the AFC's ruling that the ManU match should not be held during the Asian Cup Finals during July 7-29. It is naive to think that a ManU match on 27 July will not affect the other matches.

It is also strange that the FAM can offer the excuse that "they have no authority to stop the English champions from playing here as it is organised by a private promoter working with the Ministry of Tourism."

Unless ManU is playing a match against a team without FAM affliation and without FAM match officials.

After all it is only a football match that EPL teams use for promotion and marketing purposes - more like a demo and for a working holiday rather than the sweat and blood of a title chase.

I thought politics and sports did not mix and this incident shows politics can have a bad effect on sports unless the dates for ACF were not known prior to the ManU date.

The PR guys in the PM's department really need to get their act together as it seems the PM is the person who is insisting that the ManU match is played without any alternative date.

The second incident is the abrupt cancellation of the international inter-faith conference with about two weeks notice.This I feel has more serious implications about Malaysia's reputation as a country that is supposed to practise religious tolerance.The information for the cancellation has somehow morphed into a postponement but with no new dates proposed.The reason given was that the PM wanted to attend the conference very much but something more urgent turned up.

There was no official apology and it is a simple case of really bad manners. If one cannot attend the whole conference, he could just make a speech and attend whatever sessions that are convenient.After all it is an ongoing series of dialogues and this type of dialogue take years to crystallize ideas.

Obviously I cannot apologise on behalf of our Prime Minister but I feel these two incidents show the ugly face of Malaysia.

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MALAYSIAWATCH POLL 28 17th July 2007Why Do You Think the Government Has Changed its Mind about Disclosing Toll Agreements?

I Support the Government's Decision The Government has made a major blunder with secret Toll Agreements The Public Have Been Cheated and Disclosure will Anger the Citizens The OSA have been Abused to Favour Government Cronies. Toll Agreements should be made public